National Employment Law Project (NELP) was a participant or observer in the following events:

After President Obama exhorts Congress to pass his jobs legislation package, which he calls the “American Jobs Act of 2011,” during his address to a joint session on September 8, some Republican lawmakers note that no legislator has officially submitted the bill and thusly there is no legislation to pass. Representative Louis Gohmert (R-TX) submits his own quickly written “American Jobs Act of 2011” hours before a Democratic House member can submit Obama’s 155-page, $447 billion legislative package. Gohmert’s bill is two pages long and would “amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the corporate income tax.” Gohmert issues a press release that reads: “We have heard a lot of rhetoric about job creation from President Obama over the last several days. After waiting to see what the president would actually put into legislative language, and then waiting to see if anybody would actually introduce the president’s bill in the House, today I took the initiative and introduced the ‘American Jobs Act of 2011.’ It is a very simple bill, which will eliminate the corporate tax which serves as a tariff that our American companies pay on goods they produce here in America. This bill will actually create jobs in America. Right now, American manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas. What is really insidious about this tax is that corporate taxes are paid by the consumer—built in to the cost of the good or service. Corporate taxes are paid for by people in the form of lower wages to American workers and less money paid out in dividends in everything from 401K retirement accounts and to those who would risk their capital in business ventures. This type of capital investment is where jobs come from. Unlike President Obama’s bill, which clocks in at 155 pages, the ‘American Jobs Act’ is only two pages. The American people want to see jobs and economic growth and this bill guarantees that outcome. America would instantly become a safe haven for businesses resulting in an explosion in revenue increases. If we really want to create jobs and grow the economy, we must pass ‘The American Jobs Act’ now.” [Daily Caller, 9/14/2011; Louis Gohmert, 9/14/2011; Los Angeles Times, 9/15/2011] Gohmert objects to a provision in the Obama legislative package which would forbid employers from discriminating against unemployed workers, accusing Obama of trying to create a “new protected class” of Americans and saying that the point of the anti-discrimination language would be to give “trial lawyers… 14 million new clients.” The National Employment Law Project (NELP) says that Gohmert is wrong in his accusations, and that the legislation “would not make employment status a protected class like race or sex,” but “simply bans hiring discrimination against the jobless.” Employer discrimination against unemployed job applicants is well-documented and on the rise, according to NELP. [Huffington Post, 8/11/2011; Huffington Post, 9/14/2011] Kirsten Boyd Johnson of the satirical political news Web site Wonkette calls Gohmert’s legislation “childish,” and says that, according to recent polls, Americans largely blame Congressional Republicans for, as she writes, “destroying America with their petulant refusal to govern like a dignified body of elected lawmakers in favor of running around like naughty children stealing other peoples’ homework.” Bloomberg News, which reports on the polling, quotes retired New York citizen Ray DiPietro as saying: “I’ve been a registered Republican for 50 years or more, but I don’t like what they are doing. [Republicans] are more concerned about getting Obama out of office than with making things right.” DiPietro says he receives emails on a daily basis from Republicans who denigrate Obama and “tear him apart, and that’s no way for grownups to talk.” Indianapolis Republican Nicole Olin agrees, saying: “I do put the majority of the blame on the Republicans, because they seem to be the least willing to give up anything. Just because a majority votes you in doesn’t mean you don’t have to compromise in one way, shape, or form to make sure you do what’s good for everyone.” Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) warns of the dangers of taking any set of polls in “isolation,” and says the poll result “highlights a broad dissatisfaction among the American people with the way their government has been operating.” [Wonkette, 9/15/2011; Bloomberg, 9/15/2011] David Weigel of Slate writes that Gohmert “prank[ed]” the White House in submitting his legislation, which has no real chance of ever being enacted. Although House Democrats have not yet formally submitted the actual American Jobs Act, it has been posted online by the Obama administration. [Slate, 9/12/2011; Slate, 9/15/2011] Democrats can submit the bill under its original title, as House rules do not forbid two separate pieces of legislation having the same name, though as Los Angeles Times reporter James Oliphant notes, “[I]t could result in a lot of Democrats and Republicans shouting on the floor about two different bills.” [Los Angeles Times, 9/15/2011] In the past, Gohmert has accused the Obama administration of orchestrating the deaths of “one in five” Americans through its health care legislation (see July 16, 2009), of implementing “eugenics” and creating Nazi-like “youth brigades” (see July 24, 2009), and of lying about the likelihood that failing to raise the debt ceiling would lower the nation’s credit rating (see July 13, 2011).

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